


Lan and Pops and Mangled Mauve

by untilourapathy (gwendolen_lotte)



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: F/F, Femslash, St Mungo's Hospital, World War I
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-08
Updated: 2018-01-08
Packaged: 2019-03-02 11:09:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,075
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13316844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gwendolen_lotte/pseuds/untilourapathy
Summary: Rolanda Hooch is a Quidditch player and Poppy Pomfrey is the junior Healer that treats her.Or: two ladies meet during the Great War and the rest is history.





	Lan and Pops and Mangled Mauve

**Author's Note:**

  * For [HenryMercury](https://archiveofourown.org/users/HenryMercury/gifts).



> The stellar lupeymoony has drawn [this amazing piece of art for this fic!](https://lupeymoony.tumblr.com/post/170032863045/rolanda-hooch-and-poppy-pomfrey-in-lans-and) <3 <3

_September, 1916 ___

____

____

Three corridors, two tiny alcoves and one secret emergency personnel slide later, Poppy finds herself in the ward the other junior Healers affectionately term Mangled Mauve – but in the presence of their superiors, the Emergency Ward, walls an unfortunate shade of maroon-puce. It’s where the more serious injuries that aren’t specific enough to be housed elsewhere lie, and for that reason, it’s where a lot of the junior Healers are consigned to – those who haven’t any specialisation, at least. She doesn’t much mind – there’s a high success rate anywho, and they can normally get the patients discharged within a couple days. The rapid turnover always ensures there’s something interesting about, and it’s not quite as disheartening as Capricious Chartreuse, her least favourite of the general wards. 

Mungo’s employees like their alliteration. Possibly to keep themselves amused as they willingly trudge to work every single day, a capacious home for the dying, despite shortages, despite long shifts, despite poor pay. She’s so tired she can feel it bone deep. She looks at the bags under her superiors’ eyes and thinks, we could fit a bed there for an injured child. The bags are almost the same bruised purple colour as the walls of Mangled Mauve, anyway. If she were any braver, she’d say that to her fellow Juniors in the tea-room, but she’s never quite sure when her omnipresent superiors are hanging about, slurping at their caffeine gratefully by the spenny coffee machines the Juniors aren’t to touch. Because there’s never enough: there aren’t enough beds, aren’t enough hours in the day and aren’t enough jolly tunes she can whistle when pouring cups of milky, warm tea to the little moppets as they run around her joyfully, not knowing that the next day could be their last. 

But she’s just come off a twenty-four hour break, a rarity enough in their profession that she’s jaunty as she goes about checking the list, wondering who she’s up for treating and what on earth they’ve done to deserve being chucked in Mangled Mauve, of all things. The fifteen hours of sleep she’d got last night were agreeing with her and she had a sense things would go well, that day. That she’d meet someone intriguing enough to goss about in the tea-room later with her mates, or some wanker would do something so inane they’d manage to get a few days worth of laughter out of it. Mungo’s needs all the laughter it can get.

So when she peers a little closer at the list, tracking her finger down to the words listed in red by Bed 21, she’s a tad surprised. _Hooch, Rolanda_ it reads. She’s not really up to date with the latest, as her job doesn’t allow for any other interests besides honing the skill of power-napping, but she’s fairly sure she’s heard the name before. A rare occurrence for her, as everyone falls ill, but not everyone gets treated by a Junior. She frowns as she heads over to Bed 21, pondering over where she’s heard the name Hooch before. Hooch? Mooch? Cooch – nope, liver fluke? Hmm. 

When she looks over to the bed, she’s faced with a jogger-clad young woman open-faced, skin a little worn by the weather, but they’re good lines, laugh lines even. She scribbles ‘suggest sun cream’ on the tiny standard-issue chart she’s been given, but she doesn’t know if the Pharmacy has any on the Ministry coin left, given that they’re rationing. The Great War isn’t even theirs, but they’re feeling the consequences. They have to even save parchment, these days. 

She nods at the woman. Rolanda Hooch, she thinks, letting that slide off the tongue. She looks about her age, as well. She hopes she won’t be a war casualty. So much wasted potential for one so young. 

‘Alright?’

‘Clearly not as I’m here, aren’t I?’ says the woman, Rolanda Hooch. Ro-lan-da Hooch. 

‘Hello Rolanda Hooch,’ she amends, going for a different tactic, ‘would you mind telling me what happened just now?’ She taps the chart, hoping to look sufficiently self-important and commanding that she’d get something useful out of Rolanda Hooch. 

‘I was carted here and sat upon this too-small bed – ’

‘No, Ms Hooch, the causes for your injury.’ She’s going to be a difficult one, right. Poppy isn’t too sure how she felt about this patient, and she’d been on such a positivity kick as well. 

‘Call me Lan, yeah? Was on a broom. Flying on the Ministry lookout, watching out for suspicious activity as a civ, see. Doing my bit for country and all, I’m a Muggleborn, I have to. Then this anti-aircraft, yeah, completely singed my broom. A Silver Arrow, as well. I’m done for for now, alright. The Ministry flying squad prolly won’t even let me do a quick little job from here to Cornwall, looking out for enemy planes at that.’ 

A civilian working the Ministry flying lookout, oh gosh. Watching for enemy planes on a broom! There’s barely any protection on that, Poppy worries. Rolanda Hooch’s hands are chapped and bitten by the wind, calloused and browned. The poor thing probably hasn’t even been trained by the Ministry for more than a few hours. She knows how the gov gets in wartime. Poppy turns her head a little, hoping she looks convincingly reassuring while cataloguing the visible damage. A reticent patient, mind, is never going to be too frank with how they’re feeling. She knows that well enough. But Poppy needs a diagnosis for this one, an internal specifically if there was possibility of damage from a Muggle aircraft, and who knows what the elekitircy could have done to her, and – 

Then Rolanda Hooch smiles and she’s gone. Her open face, smile lines already so lovingly drawn, only grows with a smile. Like a sunflower reaching towards the sun. She’d like to be Rolanda’s sun, Poppy thinks. She’d do a good job, she already knows she’d do anything for that smile. Is that how the sun feels? 

‘Now, then, tell me more,’ Poppy says with an answering grin, suddenly feeling all of her twenty-two years instead of a curmudgeonly eighty-year-old with an equally broken, tired body. She tucks her chart behind the bed as she goes to cross her legs by Rolanda, waving her wand to do the diagnostic. ‘What’s this about an anti-aircraft?’ 

They like to think a little bit of history was changed, with that. They do.

**Author's Note:**

> This is unbetaed, any mistakes are my own! xx You can find me on tumblr at untilourapathy :)
> 
> Thank you Henry for being the wonderful being that you are, see you in Niche City!


End file.
